Eli doesn't use the word, but it should be clear by now that Rob McKenna's established position on health care reform is total bullshit. He says he's not opposed to most of the provisions of the Affordable Care Act, largely just the so-called "individual mandate," yet admits that most of the other provisions can't survive with out it. (Except when he doesn't.)

The fact is you can't eliminate exclusions for preexisting conditions without penalizing healthy people who choose not to purchase insurance, because otherwise there would be zero incentive to purchase insurance until one got sick, and that would just make insurance unaffordable for those that have it. It would be like purchasing fire insurance, but only after your house burned down. Imagine the premiums.

McKenna understands this. As do most of his fellow Republicans. And they also understand that without the near universal coverage provided by the ACA (or better yet, a public option or single-payer system) the uninsured will continue to burden the rest of us through the ever ballooning cost of their uncompensated care.

So my question for McKenna and his fellow Republicans is: When do you grow the balls to call for legislation allowing emergency rooms, clinics, and other medical providers to simply deny care to people who can't pay for it? Conservatives are all for "personal responsibility" and everything, so at what point if you show up at an emergency room with a serious injury or illness do we just allow you to die?

Republicans like to talk about the need to live within our means. Well, it's time for them to be honest with voters and start talking about the need to die within it as well. Likewise, if it's unconstitutional to require some people to purchase insurance, it also must be unconstitutional to require those that do purchase it to pay for the consequences of those that don't.

Can't get much more free market than that.